


Unfortunate Incidences of Collapsing Bookshelves

by squanderbird



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe, F/M, bookshop owner, university student
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-24
Updated: 2012-07-24
Packaged: 2017-11-10 15:51:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 725
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/468017
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/squanderbird/pseuds/squanderbird
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She walks through a dappling of early morning light on her way to lectures. AU; Tonks is a university student, Lupin is a bookshop assistant.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Unfortunate Incidences of Collapsing Bookshelves

**Author's Note:**

  * For [etiam_quietus](https://archiveofourown.org/users/etiam_quietus/gifts).



She walks through a dappling of early morning light on her way to lectures; neon maverick girl, weighted by cartoon heart-print DocMartens and layered burnished-soft knitted jumpers. Cable tights flash against the incoming frost. The sun is cold today. She has turquoise plaits hanging to her waist, knotted taut with satiny bits of ribbon, gauzy pastel, spattered with alphabet beads. Plum eyeliner orbiting honey-coloured eyes in a sweep; scary sweetheart witchkins, bowed under by a graffitied backpack. She is nineteen, a theatre student officially, and special – magic curdling uneasy secretive in her blood. She’s hiding out from her kind, a lumpy knitted scarf in orange-yellow autumn hidden beneath her bed, because she’s young and unsure and looking for herself, the one who looks back when she’s stripped of her powers and spells and beautiful witchery. A year amongst Muggles, an adventure of her own making, let’s see what she can do by herself alone.

 

The bookshop door cordially jangles as she shuffles in. The shop assistant glances up briefly from an illustrated Poe collection, nods, delves back into an imagining of ravens and young dead girls, dancing skeletons nevermore in the dust. She makes hastily for the comfort of contemporary plays, noting the vague gaps where the wizarding greats of her invisible culture would fit. Her fingertips trace the ridges of fresh new paperbacks, Pinter, Berkoff, mass-marketed to hungry audiences peering absorbed through the hot lights. Pine-wood air freshener bought poundstore cheap misting the air she breathe in – she can tastes the chemicals fizzing and catching in the back of her throat, stifles a brief racking cough but ultimately fails.

 

“You okay?” asks the shop assistant, worried-eyed concern, unsmiling: she’d noticed that about him first thing, after the strain in his posture, the lead darkness softly bruising beneath his eyes. He covers his mouth on an intake of yawn – there’s a healing scratch across the skin, claw mark recent, seeping, fresh. A scar silvering into fade-out on his cheekbone.

 

“Sure,” she wheezes, triggering another battle-worthy round.

 

“I’ll get you a glass of water,” he frets – there’s something kind about him, despite the glowering feral edge to his movements. He scuttles out back, batting ashy hair ineffectually from his forehead. He looks very tired, like he isn’t paid enough to deal with this. The coughing subsides. She leans against a bookshelf and sighs relieved. She’s forgotten the momentum of her backpack shoved against light cheap wood –

 

“Wait!” the assistant shouts, rushing out on schedule to see the bookcase topple to the floorboards with a sickening –

Silence. She opens her eyes to find him staring at her, wand outstretched, streaming light. She can see her shock reflected in the glass window behind, in his eyes. The bookshelf and its contents are suspended moments before collapse; with a flick of his wrist, they settle back into their original postures. The quiet is such that they can hear the creak of wood re-acclimatising itself to its safety.

“Oh, bloody hell,” he mutters, raising his wand again, hesistance in his face but gestures steady.

Before he can get past the first obliterating syllable, she’s pinned him to the desk with a binding, wand retrieved from her fake-fur pocket, aftertaste of a quickly muttered spell lingering on her lips. They stare each other down for a moment – golden eyes to brown – before she sighs and releases the enchantment.

“Witch.”

“Lycanthrope.”

This throws him; terror paralyses his features, his voice wavers.

“H-how did you know?”

“It was more of a guess really – the scar, the smell of raw beef, the recent full moon and your tiredness – but since you just confirmed it –“

“I see.” Brittle scowl. “Why are you here?”

“Because. You?”

“Because.”

Another long moment, agonising quiet, before she breaks it to make for the door.

“Thanks for helping with the bookshelf –” she squints at the name tag, “Remus. Ironic choice.”

“Not mine. And you are?”

“Nymphadora,” she replies, yanking the door open, “Call me Tonks, though. I’m the one with the crazy hair.”

“See you around, Tonks.”

“Same.”

She walks faster; she’s late for her lecture, mind swirling. Why does she walk into supernatural creatures in her one haven from magic? Irony, irony. _See you around, Tonks._ She walks faster, but it feels like tired brown eyes are following her. She isn’t quite sure whether to like it or not.


End file.
